So-called front passenger airbags are common in automotive engineering and are used to protect the front passenger, namely in particular to protect his/her head in case of a head-on collision or a laterally displaced head-on collision. Such a front passenger airbag is arranged in the dash panel—mostly in an upper area—and deploys between the instrument panel windscreen and the passengers when a head-on impact is detected.
The airbag envelopes of the current front passenger airbags have been designed with a large volume and thus cover the entire upper area of the instrument panel in front of the passenger. As a result, they provide very good protection because the head as well as the chest can be restrained by the front passenger airbag. Besides this advantage provided by a large-volume front passenger airbag, there are, however, also many disadvantages: Owing to the large volume, a correspondingly large and powerful gas generator has to be used, meaning a relatively large weight which is obviously always undesirable. Furthermore, large-volume front passenger airbags have to deploy very quickly in order to attain their full deployment in a timely manner. Consequently, the front passenger gas bag can be dangerous for the passenger if he/she is not in the standard seating position. A great deal of effort is expended to solve this problem, as is apparent from the extensive patent literature published in this regard.